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Carols visit

It was now just past 11 am and Elli had calmed down a lot.
Her and Maya were sitting at the coffee table, putting together a puzzle.
"Damn it. I can't find this one stupid piece." Maya said frustrated.
Elli let out a giggle but Carina looked over from the kitchen, giving Maya stern look.
„La lingua Maya!" She scolded.
That made Elli release a full on belly laugh.
Maya and Carina were both more than happy to hear that lovely sound and couldn't help but giggle themselves.
"I'm sorry my love." The blonde said with puppy dog eyes, „not gonna happen again"
obviously not really meaning it.
„Sure." The Italian rolled her eyes.

By the time they had finished the puzzle, Carina was done cooking and started to set the table.
„Can you two come eat please?"
Ellis whole body tensed at those words.
„Listen honey..."
Maya had noticed her foster daughters nerves. She took the side of Ellis face into her hand to make her look up at her.
„You're going to eat as much as you want to eat. Not more and not less. In no circumstance do we want you to eat more than you can, okay?"

After a quick look at Carina to make sure this was the case and the Italian smiling back reassuringly, the girl nodded in agreement. „Okay."

Elli had about half her plate before stopping.
„Are you finished bambina?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Alright then." Carina said and cleared the plates off the table. She transferred Ellis remaining lunch to a bowl and put it back on the table.
"This is here for whenever you'd like to eat something." Carina said kindly.

After sitting back down, the wife's gave each other a look.
„Bambina, do you think maybe you'd be able to drink a smoothie?" Carina started.
"Would that be easier to get down?"
Elli thought for a second. A smoothie sure didn't seem as threatening as a plate of food.
"Maybe, yeah." She answered.
Carina looked at Maya, the blonde immediately understood the assignment. She got up and started mixing one of her daily smoothies, replacing some of the greens with some sweeter fruit.

"There you go." The blonde said, placing the somewhat purple smoothie in front of her foster daughter.
"How about you try drinking this before dinner tonight?" Carina asked carefully.
"I can try."
"Thank you bambina."

There was a bit of silence while the girl tried the drink.
"Elli, you know Carol is coming over today right?" Maya started hesitantly.
"Yeah I know." Elli answered sadly, putting the smoothie back down. She didn't like Carol one bit.
"We wanted to talk about a few things with her today that we think might be best discussed if it were just between us grown ups."
The almost forgotten talk from earlier immediately shot back into Ellis brain.
Were they really getting rid of her?
They've been so nice today.
Would they really?

"Elli?" Carina tried to get the zoned out girl's attention.
She snapped back to reality.
"Uhhhm yeah, sorry. I can stay in the room."
Calling it her own room would have hurt too much.
"Thank you sweetheart."

As if on cue, the doorbell rang. Maya and Carina looked at each other confused.
"It's not 1 yet..." Carina asked. "Is it?"
"I don't think so." Maya answered with a quick look at her watch.
"No. It's not even half past twelve."
Another ring of the doorbell, now pared with a loud knock, made Maya get up to open the door.

"Finally." Carols voice came through the door as Maya opened it.
"Hello miss Jones." Maya spoke with fake niceness, ignoring the woman's comment. "I'm sorry we haven't yet finished cleaning up after lunch. We weren't expecting you this early."
Maya said bluntly.
"Well I'm here" the woman said "so let's get this over with, shall we?"
Maya stepped aside to let the woman enter the apartment.
Carina had gotten up to greet the social worker as well.
"Nice to see you miss Jones."
Carina tried her best to sound genuine.
"Yes. Should we start with a quick look through the apartment then?"
Carol didn't seem to want to spend a second longer than necessary doing this.